At a time when national television news coverage seems to be undergoing a trend leading toward more features and scandal, the hours devoted to the departure of Martha Stewart from prison leave one wondering what is next for the news programs.

One does not have to experience admiration or dislike for Stewart, or to have an opinion as to the justice in her conviction and sentence, to raise the question whether CNN, in particular, but other networks and cable, in general, are moving more toward softer news coverage. Have they overdone the Martha Stewart story, and what is to follow?

Most news shows today seem to start with Stewart and then switch to the Michael Jackson trial.

It is not as if there were a shortage of major news.

On the international front, there are actions which may be historic not just in Iraq, but in Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea. Peace may be a long way off, but the trends in most of those areas are favorable to United States' policy and more democratic than the world has seen before.

At home there is major debate over Social Security, Medicare, tax policy and education, to mention a few topics. Those topics are treated in short sound bites.

All of this comes at the time when the capable Tom Brokaw has left his anchor post at NBC, and Dan Rather has followed on CBS. Both anchormen have their critics, but they, like Walter Cronkite of a respected time now long behind us, thrived on hard news. Rather has been the most controversial, but his questions always have been tough. He long has been a newsman who pushed the edge, and he finally was caught on a story aimed at President Bush. The "exposure" reminded me of an old Hearst city editor's comment: "Don't let the facts interfere with the story."

In the days of the last half century, the networks were run with a tight fist by broadcast giants such as Frank Stanton and Bill Paley of CBS, Julian Goodman of NBC and Leonard Goldenson of ABC. They and their professional news staffs brought television to a place of predominance in the coverage of politics and world news during the decade of the '50s.

It is interesting that "60 Minutes," the hardest hitting of all the shows, still remains on top, although to me it seems to have softened a bit since the retirement of its founding producer, Don Hewitt. It, too, may be changing subtly. "60 Minutes II" never has measured up to the Sunday show.

Credibility is important to network news, a new Gallup Poll shows that only 23 percent of the audience believes "all or most all" of what Rather says. A startling 19 percent say they believe almost nothing of Rather's comments. That compares with 31 percent believability for Peter Jennings and 8 percent believe almost nothing. Brian Williams of NBC is new, and his poll results are inconclusive.

During the recent presidential election campaign, there was another very real broadcast phenomena. CNN made itself the favorite channel for the Democrats, and Fox, organized by Roger Ailes, became the favorite channel for ardent Republicans. In the process, both lost credibility. Was this ethical use of air or cable time?

Tom Johnson, CNN's former CEO, organized his station to cover foreign areas with broadcasts aimed at their local constituencies. It was a good move, but during the election year, these broadcasts became political and took on a strong anti-war tack.

Over the years, public broadcasting has come under serious attack because of its government subsidies and accusations of bias. During the '70s, the conservative protests were against the hiring of Sandor Vanocur, a liberal, as a highly paid commentator. More recently, however, "The McNeil-Lehrer Report," and now "The

NewsHour," have become the most respected, if not the most popular, of the national news broadcasts.

Currently, columnist George Will is leading an attack against the government public broadcast subsidies. He says the subsidies are out of date in an information age. In my view Will's proposal would be a mistake.

Public broadcasting provides programming which commercial stations could not afford because of advertising, and it is the only on-air outlet which is supported by actual public cash contributions. I believe there is much to be said for a public buy-in of this kind. In a sea of information, it is unique.

This is an information age, and we have before us more information than we could have believed possible just a few years ago; but information is not necessarily news, and huge portions of the Web, which brings us so much, are not creditable.

The public is fickle in tastes for news, and a further trend in broadcasting toward a lack of credibility and softer news coverage may decrease interest in what we still regard as conventional broadcast news coverage.

That would be a major information setback.

Klein is a national fellow of American Enterprise Institute, retired editor-in-chief of Copley Newspapers and former Nixon White House director of communications.